Gynaecolonialism : Why Black Babies Spark Fear, While White Babies Elicit Concern
By Ahmed Olayinka Sule, CFA
During a press conference at the Elysée Palace in January 2024, President Emmanuel Macron of France expressed concern at France’s declining fertility rate. He said, “Our France will also be stronger by relaunching its birth rate. Until recently, we were a country for which this was a strength … It’s been less true in recent years.” He then announced a “demographic rearmament” plan to combat declining fertility. Seven years earlier, the very same Macron suggested that Africa has a civilisation problem as many African countries have seven or eight children per woman. Then, in 2018, while speaking about African fertility at a Gates Foundation event, Macron likened a woman having many children to a girl being forced to marry at a young age.
This paradox of Macron’s attitude to black fertility vis a vis Western fertility is a classic example of gynaecolonialism, which is the control of women’s reproductive bodies in an independent state by a foreign entity. The West has a double standard in its discourse of population size. While increasing numbers of black babies generate fear among Western thinkers, the declining number of white babies in the West arouses concern. For centuries, western royalty, western media, western scientists, western conservationists, western politicians, western NGOs, western billionaires and Western academics have been obsessed with Africa’s fertility. One must look at the history books to understand why.
Eugenics, a Darwinian concept that contends that selective breeding of a population could advance civilisation, forms the scientific justification for gynaecolonialism. Positive eugenics encourages those with superior genes to procreate, while negative eugenics ensures that those with inferior genes are prevented from procreating. Some of the most prominent eugenists include Francis Galton, a half-cousin of Charles Darwin, Marie Stopes and Margaret Sanger, the patron saint of family planning. Several tactics were used to cull black populations. In Northern Carolina, black women were disproportionately targeted for sterilisation, while in Mississippi, unnecessary hysterectomies were carried out on black women without their prior consent. Margaret Sanger’s Negro Project deliberately targeted black communities. Harriet Washington, in her book Medical Apartheid, noted that Sanger applied negative eugenics to address black social ills.
The economic justification for gynaecolonialism is based on Thomas Malthus’s Essay on the Principle of Population, written in 1798, and Paul Ehrlich’s book titled The Population Bomb, written in 1968. While Paul Ehrlich argued that overpopulation threatened humanity, Malthus linked population growth to resource scarcity.
These scientific and economic theories have helped shape contemporary Western attitudes towards Africa’s population size, which manifests in many ways. Western thinkers frame Africa’s growth rate as threatening global security, causing environmental degradation, harming biodiversity and ensuring economic insecurity. Besides President Macron, many other prominent westerners have had something to say about Africa’s population. Prince Williams has expressed concern that Africa’s increasing population was putting pressure on wildlife and wild spaces. Prince Williams’s father, King Charles, called for population control in the developing world. His grandfather, Prince Phillip, said, “Overpopulation is to blame for many of the problems afflicting millions of people around the world.” Sir David Attenborough, the patron saint of conservationism, said that attempting to solve famine in Africa by simply sending flour bags is “barmy”, and if the world does nothing to control population, the natural world will. Bill Gates, the patron saint of global philanthropy, has argued that Africa’s population is a challenge to poverty reduction in the continent. The Western media have also been strong supporters of gynaecolonialism. According to the Economist, Africa could face a Malthusian nightmare due to its population increase, while the Financial Times, in its editorial, advocated for pushing down high birth rates, particularly in Africa.
Besides rhetorics, westerners have taken various steps in contemporary times to implement gynaecolonialism. After a 1966 census revealed that the Aboriginal population in Australia was growing, white Australian experts took steps to reduce what they described as the Aboriginal population explosion. Coercive practices were implemented to solve the population increase. Shirley Smith, the founder of the Aboriginal Medical Service, informed the Royal Commission into Human Relationships that Aboriginal women were pressurised to use intrauterine devices (IUDs) even though many were apprehensive about it.
Family planning has been the go-to tool used by Western organisations to control Africa’s population. Western agencies and NGOs have invested billions of dollars and lobbied African governments to implement birth control measures. In 2012, the British government and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation hosted a Family Planning Summit. Together with USAID, UNFPA, and other international organisations, they announced a family planning strategy of $2.6 billion. According to FP2020, between 2012 and 2017, the top ten donor Western governments provided $7.4 billion in bilateral assistance for family planning to countries in the Global South. In her book, Target Africa: Ideological Neocolonialism in the Twenty-First Century, Obianuju Ekeocha notes, “In the last two decades, the developed world has sent a staggering $106.2 billion to the developing world to slow its population growth.” During the Apartheid regime in South Africa, the government created a covert biological and chemical weapons program that focused on reducing the fertility of the black population by contaminating drinking water with contraceptives in black-populated areas.
In the time of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade era, the white slavers relied on the assistance of black elites to enslave Africans; today, western neo-Malthusians have come to rely on black elites to cull black population growth. When Margaret Sanger wanted to unleash the Negro Project on the black community, she engaged the services of black ministers. In a letter to Clarence Gamble, a eugenist and grandson of the co-founder of Procter & Gamble, she wrote, “We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.” W.E.B. Du Bois, the patron saint of African-American intellectualism, was an adviser to Sanger. Writing in Birth Control Review, a magazine established by Margaret Sanger, W.E.B. Du Bois wrote, “As it is, the mass of Negroes knows almost nothing about the birth control movement…They must learn that among human races and groups, as among vegetables, quality and not mere quantity really counts.” Mo Ibrahim, the patron saint of African philanthropy, argued at a 2023 Financial Times African Summit that family planning was the ultimate solution to usher in a brighter future for Africa. Furthermore, many African governments have embraced the wide use of population control.
After centuries of focusing its gaze on the bellies of black women, the West, in a twist of fate, has now been confronted with its own declining fertility. The replacement level fertility rate (RLF) at which a woman should give birth to maintain the population level is steadily declining in the West. The RLF in the developed world is 2.1, and many countries in the West are below that level. According to research by Lancet, the total fertility rate in Western Europe is projected to fall from 1.53 in 2021 to 1.44 in 2050 and 1.37 in 2100. This declining fertility is causing panic in capitals throughout the West. With the West facing declining fertility, the rhetorics used to describe the increased population are changing. We don’t hear much about the linkage between population rise and the environment, global security and poverty. We are now being told about the negative impacts of declining fertility, such as labour shortage, slower economic growth, strain on pension systems, and increased public debt. These negative impacts were not used when Western thinkers called for Africa to cull its population.
While the West funds Africa and other countries in the Global South to implement family planning programmes to reduce its population, paradoxically, it is implementing financial incentives and family-friendly policies to increase its population. In Hungary, the government has offered free IVF, tax breaks and low-interest loans for families with children. Australia, which in the past engaged in a systematic attempt to reduce its Aboriginal population, has implemented a baby bonus programme to incentivise women to give birth. In its 2024 budget, the Italian government allocated 1 billion euros to address low fertility.
Some Western countries have turned to immigration to address the issue of declining fertility. This policy has led to angst and fear, which has manifested in the Great Replacement Theory that black and brown immigrants from the Global South will ultimately replace the white people of the West. Viktor Orban, the Prime minister of Hungary, noted that Europe was facing civilisational suicide due to its declining fertility and high immigration. Representatives of political parties in the Netherlands, Germany, and France have also expressed concern that immigrants are replacing the Western population. Elon Musk, the patron saint of technology, described the declining birth rate as a risk to civilisation. He also warned Geert Wilders of the Party for Freedom that the Netherlands would die at its own hands if its declining birth rates continued. However, Musk had nothing to say when Western countries agitated for Africa to reduce its population.
The Western concern about Africa’s population growth and anxiety about the West’s declining fertility is a manifestation of the West’s longstanding hypocrisy. The double standard says a lot about how the West views other parts of the non-white world. As mentioned earlier, gynaecolonialism is rooted in eugenics, which is a tool for white supremacy. To reinforce the superiority of the white race, western scientists, sociologists and anthropologists created the concept of racial hierarchy in which the white race was placed at the top and the black race demoted to the bottom of the racial totem pole. With this racial hierarchy set, systems were then put in place to justify and reinforce the racial status quo. The white race was classified as having superior intelligence, superior values, and superior behaviour. In contrast, the darker races were classified as having inferior intelligence, inferior physical characteristics, inferior values, inferior sexuality and inferior civilisation. With this hierarchy in place, it then became easy to advocate and justify the eradication of the darker races.
The prevalence of black babies is seen by some as a threat to white supremacy, especially as it occurs at the same time as the rate at which fewer white babies are born. In 1700, there were 127 million people in Europe compared to 122 million people in Africa, i.e. a ratio of 1.04 Africans to a European. Today, there are approximately 746 million people in Europe compared to 1.4 billion people in Africa (1.87 Africans to one European). This ratio is expected to get larger over the years. So, it should not come as a surprise that more black babies are an unwelcome development, and more white babies would be a welcome development.
The racialisation of the fertility discourse fits into the pattern of the West talking out of both sides of its mouth. With one side of its mouth, the West says, “Population increase is bad”, while with the other side of its mouth, the West screams, “Declining fertility is bad.” We see this form of doublespeak in other spheres of life. The West talks about being a bastion for democracy and freedom, while it has a long history of undermining democracy and freedom in different parts of the world, such as in South Africa, Chile, Brazil and Guatemala. The West brags about being the upholders of the rule of law. However, when the law works against its interest, the West finds ways to bend the rules by rewriting them to enable it, for example, to seize a sovereign nation’s assets to fund weapon supplies to an ally. Human rights have been appropriated as core western values, and the West is quick to lecture the Global South on the need to respect human rights. But once western interests are threatened, the West would waste no time in breaching human rights or supporting its allies that violate human rights.
When it comes to describing population increase in the black-populated parts of the world, the West will use alarming terms like: “Population boom,” “explosion,” “astronomical proportion,” and “unprecedented”. In contrast, it uses softer phrases and words like: “worrisome,” dwindling workforce,” and “concerning” to describe declining fertility in the West. When addressing the population increase in Africa, the West invokes “Family Planning”; however, when addressing the population decline in the white world, the West invokes “Family Support.”
The West frequently ignores the agency of Africans in reproductive rights in its attempt to limit Africa’s population — something it does not do when engaging with Western women. Africa is typically subjected to Western standards without consideration of the local context. Furthermore, African voices are often ignored. In other instances, coercive procedures are sometimes carried out on poor African women without their informed consent, as in the case of Kenya, South Africa and other African countries where Depo-Provera, which has carcinogenic effects, has been used. As a result of the disregard for African women’s agency, the white saviour complex arises whereby the white westerner comes down to Africa from Europe and America to help prevent Africa from destroying itself due to its population size.
My detractors may claim that my analysis combines emotionalism, conspirational thinking and nuance anaemia. I offer a counter-narrative to an issue not widely covered by mainstream Western media. The historical precedence highlighted in this essay has addressed any claim of conspirational thinking. My emotionalism is a reaction to racialised Western attitudes and actions towards Africa’s population.
Ever since the Portuguese traders landed on the western coast of Africa in the late fifteenth century, the West has continuously exploited Africa. From slavery to colonialism to neocolonialism through to gynaecolonialism, the West has dictated the narrative and taken all the spoils. The chickens of the West’s never-ending focus on curbing the number of black babies has finally come home to roost with the West’s declining fertility. As the West continues to push for more abortion rights and implements euthanasia and mercy killing legislation for its population, the decline in its population is expected to continue. Maybe it is time that the West turns its white gaze from the bodies of African women and spends its energy on tackling its self-created depopulation. The West should not curtail African women’s right to fertility to satisfy the needs of Western politicians and environmental and animal rights activists.
It’s time for the West to discard its colonial zero-sum view of the world, in which progress and growth of the Global North only come at the expense of the Global South. With this shift in mindset, the world will be a better place for all. Finally, the West should get over its fears and concerns; after all, a black baby is as precious as a white baby.
Selah.
Ahmed Olayinka Sule, CFA
@Alatenumo
November 2024
Ahmed Sule is a writer, financial analyst and documentary filmmaker.
